Info Pane

News:  Within Cutting Edge builds the Info Pane is in the process of being migrated into the Contents Pane.   Some Cutting Edge builds may not have the Info Pane.   This topic  applies to published Radian Studio downloads and not to Cutting Edge builds for Manifold Future.

 

The View - Panes - Info pane provides useful information on whatever open component has the focus.  Like all panes, the Info pane may be undocked and docked by Alt-clicking on the tab or title bar.

 

il_icon_infopane_jumpto.png

The arrow button will automatically jump to the component referenced in the Project pane and will highlight it. This makes it easy in large projects to find a table from which a drawing takes data or other such related components.   

 

il_icon_infopane_more.pngClicking on the [...] buttons opens additional information panes for user-provided descriptions and notes

 

Following are examples of Info pane displays.

i_info_pane01_01.png

Info panes for tables report the number of records and other key info.

i_info_pane01_02.png

The Info pane above shows a typical display for an image taken from a web-based data source.   It provides jumps to the image, the data source and to the table used by the image.

 

i_info_pane01_03.png

The Info pane for a local image allows us to see the size of the image both in pixels and in tiles as well as the data type used by the image.

i_info_pane01_04.png

The Info pane for a drawing will show the table used as well as the coordinate system and other useful information.

Description and Notes

il_icon_infopane_more.pngClicking on the [...] buttons opens additional information panes that allow us to enter descriptions and notes.

 

 

i_info_pane01_05.png

 

In the above we have clicked the [...] button for Description and have entered a description.   We press OK to accept the edit.

i_info_pane01_06.png

The new description text will now appear in the Info pane display for that component.

 

Next we can click on the [...] button for Notes.

 

i_info_pane01_07.png

 

We enter the above text and press OK.

i_info_pane01_08.png

Any text we add for Notes will also be displayed in the Info pane when that component is opened and has the focus.

 

Where is the text stored for the Description and Notes?   In Manifold, everything is a table so the text is stored where properties are stored, in the mfd_meta table.

i_info_pane01_09.png

 

We can also see these properties by right-clicking onto the Regions drawing in the Project pane and then choosing Properties.

 

i_info_pane01_10.png

 

Notes

Manipulating descriptions and notes - A convenient aspect of having the Description and Notes texts for components being stored as properties in the mfd_meta pane is that as records in that pane they can be easily manipulated by programmatic processes.   After all, they are just records for values in a table so there is nothing to prevent some automated process that, for example, updates a drawing based on information automatically collected from a web of GPS-enabled devices to write into that drawing's Description the date and time it was updated.   

 

We can also manually Copy and Paste text from those fields into other records in the mfd_meta pane.  For example, suppose we make systematic changes to a dozen different drawings.  We can edit the text field for those properties to simply Paste an additional note about the change that we made.    We can even semi-automate that by selecting all the records we want to change either manually or by using the Select dialog and then using the Transform dialog to Copy or to Concatenate the text to all of the selected records at once.   We can even use a query in SQL if we want to alter the Description or Notes for hundreds of components at once, perhaps to add a copyright notice or some other standard text.

 

For an example of how we can copy and paste values in the mfd_meta system table from one component to another, see the Example: Style Properties in the mfd_meta Table topic.    That topic shows examples of copying and pasting formatting values but exactly the same techniques can be used to copy and paste text for Description or Notes.

 

See Also

Getting Started

 

User Interface Basics

 

View - Panes - Project

 

Example: Project Pane Tutorial - In this example we take an extended tour of the Project pane, engaging in a variety of simple but typical moves that are illustrated step by step.